The original blog [1] that much of the content was culled from goes into some more detail here. > Despite the national guidelines, cities aren't completely pow

The original blog [1] that much of the content was culled from goes into some more detail here. > Despite the national guidelines, cities aren't completely powerless. They can identify zones where certain rules will be waived to allow higher densities, or alternately, establish certain criteria like a minimum quantity of green spaces on each lot, minimum setbacks, etc... But the basic rules of zoning are still defined by the national government. And in general it sounds like the types of zones is nationally mandated, but which areas are assigned which zones are a local decision, unless I'm not understanding the idea here. [1] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html